I visited Mongolia this summer, where my friend Ganbaa lives.  The hotel room itself was nice, however paper products like tissues and toilet paper are not quite as abundant in Mongolia.  After checking in to the room, Ganbaa came by and took us out to a restaurant.

Quiz:  How many McDonald's restaurants are there in Mongolia?

After dinner, we went up a hill with a nice view of the city.  The hill had an old Soviet era monument at the top.

Next, we visited the center of the city, or what used to be "Lenin Square".  The statue of Lenin was replaced with the statue of Genghis Khan.

The next day, Ganbaa drove us out to Terelj National Park, and met Toyo, one of his nieces who had studied some English.  Along the way, we stopped to buy some pine cones sold along the side of the highway, to eat the seeds as a snack.  (It's a lot of work.)

We also stopped to take a picture of us holding an eagle.  The eagles are used for hunting, and have been popular recently with Kazakhstan hunters.

Next, we got out to Turtle Rock in Terelj.

After taking some pictures, we rented some horses to ride.  Ganbaa's saddle was too small, Toyo-san's horse always wanted to "go home" to a ranch near our route, and my horse didn't want to go anywhere.  There was a Buddhist temple at the end of the trail, so we got off the horses and climbed up towards it but only half-way, to a yellow building that enclosed some gers on the second floor and offered a nice view of the steppe below and the valley we just rode through.

After we returned to Turtle Rock on horseback, we ate at a restaurant.  As was always the case, we got served a ton of delicious food that we couldn't finish.

We enjoyed Mongolian cuisine of buuz  and khuushuur .  The portions were huge, especially compared to Japanese restaurants.

After that I climbed up to the top of the "shell" part of Turtle Rock.

On the way back, we went offroad a bit and Ganbaa let me drive the Landcruiser over the grassland and a hill.  Then we continued on through some woods and through a river.

Huntin' for Tavarga

After we got back to UB, Ganbaa left us with his driver, who took us over to pick up Ganbaa's uncle that owned a rifle and would take us hunting.  We drove around in some hills for a while, trying to get on the other side of some train tracks through various underpasses, but because of the Landcruiser's roofrack, never made it to the other side.  We found a hill to drive up that was covered with lots of rocks, and since it was getting late and unlikely to find any tavarga (marmots) before sunset, just set up a small juice box some distance away, and tried to hit that with the rifle.  The sun was setting and these photos below are mostly of the surrounding landscape.

The gun was quite old, and not in the best condition.  It jammed once, but no major accidents.  There was a big communication gap between its owner and me, but on my third attempt, managed to hit the target.  The line of sight was off and required a lot of adjusting my aim down and remembering where the first two shots went.  Afterwards, we dropped off Ganbaa's uncle and had some yogurt inside his ger.

There wasn't much sunlight left, but the photo on the left here is a kind of shrine made for good luck.  I think it was Shamanist shirne.  We walked around its circle and tossed some stones on the pile.

The next morning, Jael-san was our guide and took us out to see a giant statue of Genghis Khan on horseback.  You can go inside it to see a giant boot (made of real leather) and take an elevator up to walk out onto the horse's head.

Above-left is a giant horsewhip on display.  Above was an area where you can try on traditional Mongolian clothes/battle gear. 

Below-left is a map of the expansion of the Mongolian Empire at its height.  Below is the view from the top of the horse's head.

Yes, we tried on the clothes.

To get a sense for just how big the statue is, note the size of the cars in the parking lot in the photos below.

Jael-san was our guide and took us out to the Manjushri Monastery, a Buddhist site that had a small animal museum and many "lucky birds".  Before we got there, we had a picnic in a wide valley surrounded by mountains, seen in these shots.  As we drove back, we passed by the airport and saw many military personnel stationed alongside the road.  This was the day US VP Joe Biden (or was it Korean President Lee Myung-Bak? one of those) arrived but we didn't hit too much traffic.  We had dinner in the only Mexican restaurant in the nation.

Manjushri Monastery site

Traffic in Ulan Bator. 

One of the black markets, below.

Above, this is a pub over a busy road in UB near the black market.  After this, we went to a museum of natural history that had dinosaur bones from a Tyrannosaurus.

Below, was a picture of the traditional musical performance we watched on our last night.  (We couldn't take any other photos during the show.)  This is usually not really my kind of thing, but I enjoyed it.  It was difficult not to enjoy it, when the contortionist came out and did her thing.  How you can not like a contortionist, that's what I want to know.  They always did well on Thirty Seconds to Fame.  There were also dancers of many different styles and costumes, with similarities to Indian, Cambodian and Russian.  A throat singer performed as well.  He could have teamed up with the Disco Three's Human Beatbox. 

There are zero McDonald's in Mongolia.  When the population of Ulan Bator reaches 5 million, they will  open their first restaurant (currently, the population is under 3 million in all of Mongolia).  Coca-Cola came to Mongolia in the year 2000 or so.